Strong, Intelligent Person, Creative, and Generally at

¶ … strong, intelligent person, creative, and generally at ease with the world. I see the world as inherently good, and want to contribute to it in any positive way that I can. My creativity and intelligence are strengths. If there is a weakness it is probably with respect to discipline. It is that lack of discipline that, ideally, I would like ot change.

I think I can do better, work harder and show more than I have to this point, but it is up to me to have that focus and not allow myself to get sidetracked. When I follow my heart and passion, without self-censorship, that is when I am at my best and I want to be that person more often. I have strongly held views about right and wrong, and these views are among the most important that I have.

What flows from this, logically, is that rules and laws are not nearly as important as right and wrong. For they are inherently flawed, written with compromise in mind, if not special interests. Rules and laws are most certainly not founded in logic, nor are the written with a purity of intent -- too often they reflect the desires of those with powerful interests, and the laws that are not among those nevertheless suffer from not reflecting reality all that well.

At the dumb end, there are speed limits set sometimes far too low, and nobody takes them seriously. At the more serious end, this manifests either in not having laws strong enough to discourage unethical behavior (like stock market fraud) or situations where a court might be more interested in its rules and procedures than in uncovering the truth. My beliefs in this regard are tied to my desire to analyze the world around me, and understand it in logical terms.

I question everything, and accept that which makes sense, rejecting that which does not. For the most part, laws and ethics are aligned, but sometimes there is divergence, and I cannot reconcile my cognitive dissonance. My morality is that based on right and wrong, on absolute truths that transcend, and not on the fickle, ephemeral codified law. There are definitely those who do not agree with my views.

Some people are predisposed not to critical reflection on the world around them, but to accepting unthinkingly whatever conditions are imposed upon them. So this will occasionally be an issue. Usually it is something silly -- like a policeman hassling a jaywalker, but sometimes the issue at hand is of utmost seriousness -- like how we are going to govern our country. Some people simply feel that we must obey whatever law is put before us, without question.

It is reasonable -- different people have different ways of processing the world around them, but for people like myself, it is impossible to reconcile the cognitive dissonance that occurs trying to understand some rules. Unit 2LC1. My perceiving lens is definitely affected by gender, race and social standing. My world views may have their own unique elements, but they ultimately reflect what I have seen and experienced, and how I grew up. A lot of that is just demographic.

My lens is also affected by my thought patterns, which tend towards analysis -- I will analyze just about anything. When I genuinely have an interest in a subject, I might gain substantial expertise, and sometimes I do just that. My way of looking at the world often involves me linking something that I have seeing or hearing to a past experience, as my way of understanding it.

This drives people crazy sometimes, because my response to them telling me a story about their experiences is to respond to my own, no matter how spurious. It's funny in hindsight, someone telling me about something serious "So I was in a car crash yesterday…and I'll be like "Oh yeah, that sucks. I remember this time I fell of my bike when I was five." My way of looking at the world can be quite unique sometimes.

Naturally, my own tastes can also have an effect, but mostly because they are part of my experience, which I use to understand my world. If I like something, I might be more apt to use it as a metaphor to help my understanding of something than if I didn't like it. There is also influence from the person I want to be.

The text describes this more as "values, goals and aspirations," but either way it is a forward-looking version of myself, one who sees an issue and has an automatic response, but wants to step back and distil the issue through multiple lenses. There are often two or more sides to a story, and I seek to understand those sides. I might reject them, outright, but I do want to pursue knowledge by evaluating critical issues through multiple lenses.

This is in part why school is so fascinating, because it gives me an opportunity learn so many different ways of thinking, and I can apply these in my daily life. Now, as to visual representation, I can say with some confidence that I am no graphic artist. I lack not only the sort of software to produce a credible visual rendering of anything, but the imagination as well. I can't draw a stick figure with a ruler, so drawing the prescription for my perceiving lenses.